this week, the tm company's ten-year path from a gushing debut on "60 minutes" through an ipo and what it's accomplishing today. a frank talk with him. would you live in an adult dorm? st some think you will for the right price. our reporters, this week on "press here." good morning. normally, i make a short introduction about the interview we're about to do, give you background. i introduce the guest, the questions begin. i'm going to ask him for his

patience. this needs more background than normal. he makes the bloom energy server. it's a box that takes natural gas or bio-gas and turns it into electricity. it's a fuel cell. no combustion, no noise. lots of very big organizations are using bloom devices. kaiser hospitals, walmart, google, even nasa. making power on site is not just more efficient and cleaner, here in california, it may be downright necessary. pg & e warned it may cut off electricity to californians during times of high fire alte on-site power is a hot commodity. the ceo is here to talk about that. he knows i'm going to want to talk about the rough time the

company has had on the stock market and bloom's unusual back story. we will start with this idea of the micro-grid. he is a former nasa scientist where he worked on thinking how to turn mars' atmosphere into oxygen. he is joined by riachel and david. thanks for being with us. all of a sudden, you have an alternative to this worry that pg & e is giving us about turning off the power over at google, at walmart. you are running electrical plants in the parking lot. >> that's correct. good morning. thank you for having me here. electricity is about six things. it's about safety. it's about resiliencresiliency. it's about sustainability. it's about access. it's about affordability.

you need to provide that in a combined package, because in the modern digital world, electricity is a human need. it's not a maybe i can have it. >> you have proven yourself on outage recently, your boxes stayed on and provided power. during the northridge, california, about a 7.5 -- >> 7.1. >> your boxes stayed on. those are going to be dependable things for people that need that electricity. >> two super typhoons in osaka. we were powering the fish market. it was the only power that was available in all of osaka during those two super typhoons. our boxes are resilient. >> t the key thing is, centralized anything that's large has an achilles heel. it disrupts large amounts of people.

distributed inherently causes less damage should there be in instance, it's more localized. on top of that, our devices are built tough. they are built robust.themselve. that combination says that the future of electricity, because we live in a post-climate change world where there will be more natural disasters that are stronger, longer in duration and more frequent, we need reliable electricity that's resilient. >> what happens if we have an event like a major earthquake that knocks out natural gas lines? >> it does sometimes happen. here is the record for it. after the h japan earthquake nd tsunami, the only operating the

natural nots. only did we operate that one unit in we had 25 locations. not one lost gas supply. >> i was solar will not work if the power goes out. your bloom energy servers will work if the power goes out. they are generating their own electricity for themselves. >> that is correct. we are always on 24/7. even if you have a backup generator, just think about this, let's not even go into all the bad emissions that come from generators and they are not designed for day s gs out, the needs to be a sensor that tells the back juup generator, you ne to start. that's like starting your car not been sitting in the garage for a long period of time. it better start.

then switches need to fall from one side to the other. things don't work. very often, the statistics are 40% of the time, something happens wrong in that transition happening and power doesn't come. with the bloom box, we are constantly producing power where we are. when the grid goes out, our boxes don't know the grid has gone out. the customer never sees a blip in their electricity, which is extremely important for continuous manufacturing and data centers and things like that. >> how does the math work? then you have continuous production of a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, for those occasional times when you need a backup generator. >> if you look at a very large facility, you take a super store, or you take a hospital, the amount of power that they get today, anywhere in any city, has at least 60%, 50% even when

we go to our goals, coming from base load power. that base load power is from a fossil fuel source and the cleanest of fossil fuel is natural gas. that natural gas in a large fossil fuel source is coming for distribution and losing efficiency, which means its carbon footprint is greater than the one we put out on a regular basis. >> i think i have the numbers in front of me. this is pounds per megawatt hour. the grid in california, 1,083. yours 735 to 849. >> we are lower in carbon footprint than the marginal grid, even in a state like california which is very clean. in other states, in other countries, much more superior. >> let me follow up with kind of what started with in the

beginning. you have tesla power wall companies. you have some solar companies, not mine, in which it will work when pout epower goes out. this could be a bit of a business opportunity. you tried to sell this local. you sold it as cleaner. now all of a sudden, a third way your sales people can get out in front of companies. >> yes. resilient, reliable micro-grid. what we will do is we will have a bloom box along with solar panels as they exist in the building, along with battery storage if it exists, combined together. that micro-grid will take the best assets depending on you have, then when the sun is shining, whatever solar is available, we will obviously use it.hen the sun is not shining. bloom needs to operate. >> the founder and ceo. we will take a quick break. we will be back in a minute.

welcome back to "press here." we are talking with the ceo and founder of bloom energy. we finished tal cou be used tolectvicity in times of crisis, especially as pg & e cut os off fire during hh fire danger. i want to talk about bloom. bloom energy is not just any

company. its birth was the closest silicon valley got to something biblical. it started with a positive report from leslie stahl on "60 minutes." >> we are the first news organization to look at the innards of the bloom box that he had been toiling on for nearly a decade. this is it? he offered to give me a look inside the bloom box. >> nobody has seen this before. >> are you gly. why not? >>s unveiling. the steve jobs-like reveal. the governor was there. there larry page about the nature of this event. it strikes the two of us, this is like the google ipo. >> he was wrong. while bloom did ipo, it would be a decade nearly later, and its

share price hit a high of 35. trades this morning for $4.10. the headline in 2019 is different than 2010. the ceo is aware of the headlines. he knows the buck stops with him. we will get to the stock price in a minute. that must have been math ingica have "60 minutminutes" -- you exploded into silicon valley. >> ten years later, is this where you thought you would be? question to ask. let me put numbers for you. since 1981 -- 1979 is when carter put solar panels on the white house roof. 1981 is commercial production

started. through 2011, 30 years, whatever amount of energy solar power had produced as an industry, bloom produced in the last nine years. a single company. >> yes. >> that's a statistic. those are real numbers that can be verified. we have moved at rapid pace for a brand-new technology that did not exist before that nobody else did. >> let me give you a comparison. in that debut at ebay in the rk a single electric car. >> true.ut different vehicles or different technologies and what youdo, wh

infrastructure, the rules of the road, how to put them in the street, they existed. for us, we were not just building a company, we were not just ed building an industry, w were building an ecosystem. when we go to a city to put this, every city has a different permitting rule. some places the fire marshal says, you put gas and you are doing something in a box and producing electricity. it can get hot. wait. i need to see everything. it's a very different thing. that's one data. the second data point is, you showed the segment. they said, now that they have shown this, within ten years there will be lots of these. none of them will carry the bloom name. it will say names of large companies. there's not a single company today that can do what we do. >> when you look back over the last ten years, if we think about other technologies that were emerging and getting going at that time, we talked about

solar, and we did get to a hockey stick adoption curve with solar, especially in california, where it did take off and prices got to be right, a lot of us who cover this space have been waiting for that to happen to fuel cells, to see if it would. they have never gone away. they have eeked out slow, steady growth. we have never actually seen them really take off the way you would expect with a technology that's got all the advance tajhed you are advertitajh advantages that you are advertising. >> it's not held the industry back, because you are taking it from -- you are taking a snapshot from 2010 to 2020. it was flat for a long period of time that a lot of things were happening. if we ask what was the tipping

point for solar, it was like you said, california mandated a million rooftops. california mandated a law and said, utilities, anybody shall be asked to implement this with -- >> solar got help from government. you have been getting help from government as well. there are rebates, there are tax breaks that these companies are getting as well. how much of your business depends on california or the federal government coming in and helping with the money? >> sure. here is the thing. the first few years in lf-generation i zero on that. there's no incentive today.tenog called tax credit that's a federal tax credit. we also enjoy that like everybody else. that is almost not even leveling

the playing field, because here is the thing. if you look at a pg & e or anyi industrial complex for 12 to 13 cents on average electricity. they will sell to homes at 56 to 60 cents. that's what you and i pay. i'm not allowed to sell to the home -- multiple homes. i'm only allowed -- >> right. >> they are sub ssidized in a different way. it's not even leveling the >> do you think there's a point in which natural gas lost its luster as far as green energy goes? it's not green green. but it is the cleanest of them. there has been a pushback from some governments about, solar is fine, hydro is fine. natural gas is still a carbon fuel. >> santa clara recently banned

you guys, because -- >> we are fighting that. >> suing them ? >> yes. let me explain this. great question. let me explain this in a simple way. today there is no pathway for just renewable energy, with storage, to be able to take care of our modern life. >> right. i agree with that. >> there's no expert that will say that. >> here is what i'm going to do. i'm the boss and i get to do these things. i'm going to tell the people on at on up wating on .co television, we will get to something else. if you would like to continue this conversation, i will be fair and do that on pressheretv.com. up next, a solution to san francisco's high housing prices when "press here" continues.

welcome back to "press here." we have talked to companies offering creative ideas to help

san francisco people live. the community living idea is the brainchild of a child of hippies. john lived in san francisco since rent was $1,000 a month. it's a very long time.star with. what's the biggest complaint you get from a bunch of adults a adult dorm? >> the biggest complaint people have is, can you make the price more affordable. we started the company with the mission to make great cities accessible to everyone. right now, our average cost is around $2,000 a month. we have a project we will break ground in downtown san francisco on that will allow people to live in the city for $800 a month, bringing it back to that cost when i first moved to san francisco. downtown san jose, we have a project we will break ground on soon that will feature units as

chief ch it's fully furnished, your utilities are included. >> kitchens are fabulous. >> beautifully designed. what we found is that if you look at a modern high-rise, there's all of this wasted space. kitchen, living room, hallway, that space goes unused for 60% of the year. we're building unsustainably. people are feeling isolated. people walk into a lobby. everyone is staring at their phone. who are my neighbors? they are like, i wonder why i'm so lonely. we're not building buildings any differently than we were 100 years ago. it's how we design them. it's how people interester act. i grew up in palo alto, single family home neighborhood. my parents are hippies. they are beatniks. important distinction.

>> and investors. >> the feeling of biking down the street and knowing your neighbors. we had stanford students living with us. my parents got free childcare. we had engineers help us win every science fair project. the long story -- to make a long story short, that feeling of having a neighborhood and knowing the people that live around you that is not afforded in today's urban setting. what we is a way to do two things. bring the cost of living down significantly, second, bring people back to a way where they can have a community and people to rely on, not just push a button for a car or bike you borrow from somebody you know instead of screaming at each other on twitter all the time, actually have conversation. >> as a business, isn't this a really capital intensive thing to get into? you are talking about designing and building buildings.

>> yeah. >> it's a very lumpy business. you have years of permitting for any project you will put through. how do you make that actually work as a stable business thank. i have ptsd from talking to people over a period of three months, i said i will give you $5, buy you lunch, come and talk to me if you make between $40 and $100is middle c years old, i want to ask you how your living situation is. they said, no landlord has talked to us. second, they said, if you design and build what you are planning on building, we would move in tomorrow. we would move right in. the next thing we did was talk to lenders. i spent ten years in the commercial real estate business. i had known phone folks. 40 lenders laughed me out of their offices. this doesn't exist. you don't have a track record.

i remember pitching a good friend of mine. i pitched the idea. he sits quietly. he hates this. he gets up in the middle of the coffee sho a apply. venture round. that allows us to prove out a raising our first first few locations. thousands of people applied to move in. we had what was called the product market fit. from there, we shifted to actually developing and constructing the buildingin ini ourselves much sin ourselves. since we show it's a better economic outcome than an apartment, it's a better experience, the lenders that ignored us are coming back in droves as well as larger institutional capital investors. i wou it's not perfect,

but we're further than we were 3 1/2 years ago. >> you have talked about a lot of the advantages of living with people. no loneliness, getting to borrow a car. there are a lot of disadvantages to living with people, people who leave dirty dishes in the sink or have parties. when you have dorms, you have adults in the building who crack down on that. who are the adults who crack down on the troubles of community living? >> how old do you think the average age is? average age is . millennials up to 50, 60, 70-year-olds. the majority of people act appropriately. there's always the tough cookie or outcast in certain situations who came from a culture where leaving your dishes in the sink is okay. what we do is there's a lot of self-policing. we have community managers who live in who are either employees of star city or they get a stipend. similar to the resident adviser

or hotel con sciergoncierge. we took a lot of what came from common spaces.. we take care of finances around utilities. there's never an ait's taken care of. as far as lifestyles are concerned, when somebody applies to move in, there's different communities that form, different locations that form. one house might be really into board games and wine. another house might be really into tech startups. another might be into the restaurant industry. >> get to the end of your answer. >> in short what we do is we push them towards or tell them apply to a community like your lifestyle so that if you are a teacher waking up at 6:00 and next to a party promoter, that would cause friction.

>> join the 6:00 a.m. house. >> exactly. >> thank you

that's our show this week. my thanks to my guests and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.

damian trujillo: hello, and welcome to "comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo, and today a new exhibition at the mexican museum. mexican masks on your "comunidad del valle." ♪ damian san jose, alejandra bologna. we're honored to have her join us here on "comunidad del valle." and rodrigo navarro is the consul of protection here for the consulate of san jose. welcome to the show. alejandra bologna: thank you so much. damian: our audience hasn't met you. introduce yourselves, tell us about you, where you come from, and maybe your vision for the consulate.

alejandra: of course, i'm very glad to be back in california because about ten years ago, i left this extraordinary state.